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I’ve taken to writing scenes- 500 words of a snapshot into someone’s life. So I thought I’d share one with you guys, see what you think….

‘Excuse me.’ She jolted out of her daydream; the swirling colours in her mind and the outside world began to their take places again as she said ‘Yes?’ The word came out all wrong but there wasn’t time to correct it before the reply came:
‘You can move forwards.’
Butterflies erupted in her stomach, scrapping their wings along the tissue that lined it.
‘Oh.’
She turned and faced down the space that stood in front of her, feeling her fists clench and heart rate quicken, pumping fear fast around her body. She tried to swallow down the bile that was rising up her throat but her mouth was dry as a bone.
As she stared the space grew bigger and she could see the butterflies in her stomach. They frantically flapped their wings, looking for a way out, flinging themselves at her walls in an attempt to break through, but they were trapped.
‘Move!’ she thought to herself. She couldn’t. It was like there was barrier in front of her forcing her to stay where she was. She wanted to fight it, to push through, but it was impossible. She was stuck.
Then, they were no longer butterflies. They were hornets, stinging wherever they landed, then moving on and stinging again. Her mind scrambled for their explanation, but their buzzing was confusing her and she couldn’t think straight.
‘Fight it’ she thought. ‘You have worked too hard, stood in this line for too long not to do this!’
Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself down. Breath in, breath out. ‘Good,’ she muttered to herself ‘that’s a start’. Breath in, breath out. She imagined her mother’s arms wrapped around her. Her heart rate slowed. Breath in, breath out. Lying on the beach in Spain with her friends making comments about the guys going past. Her hands unclenched. Breath in, breath out. How it would feel to finally stop queueing. She opened her eyes; if she was going to move, it had to be then.
A deep breath in, a slow breath out, and she stepped forward.
The hornets or butterflies or whatever they were had stopped fighting. They were tired; their wings fell broken at their sides so they lay down in the acid beneath them. She felt them disintegrate as she glanced at the space left behind her.